Month: February 2017

This weekend we celebrated Family Day in Ontario, so it was a long weekend. I needed this so much. Honestly, Saturday just flew away since I had a lot of errands to run, that kept me away from home since morning to the early evening. Sunday ended up feeling more like Saturday for me and today, Monday, felt like Sunday. Bit complicating, isn’t it? Yeah, I know. Unless you’ve experienced this feeling before, I sound a bit like a nutter. 😛

In our household, nothing brings our family together like a home cooked meal.

What brought us together for breakfast this lovely weekend, was the famous hummus that all of us are very fond of, but I usually have to stay away because I cannot eat tahini paste and garlic. But my peeps said they can skip those ingredients and they will be just fine. Honestly, it turned out so delicious and I was able to eat it too. Yay !!!

Homemade Vegan Hummus (no tahini):

Alongside the hummus we also had some homemade Lemon Mint Black Tea that even by hubby devoured.. I added a teaspoon of vanilla agave nectar as sweetener and the whole pitcher was empty in just a few hours!

Lemon Mint Black Tea:

For lunch the winner was a Vegan Kale Potato and Chickpea Stew:

And we closed our culinary Family Day adventure with some Vegan Coffee Dark Chocolate Muffins. The addition of the coconut milk was just best option and I think it made them so fluffy and moist and they just melted in our mouths.

Vegan GF Coffee – Dark Chocolate Muffins ( NO SUGAR )

1.5 cups of banana flour

1 teaspoon baking

3 tablespoons organic Cocoa

1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips

1/4 cup of chopped pecans

1/4 cup of Sultana raisins ( my daughter doesn’t love them but I thought of adding them to help with sweetness )

one pinch of Himalayan salt

1 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup cashew milk

3 tablespoons organic agave nectar

1 teaspoon organic pure vanilla extract

1/4 cup of grape seed oil

Mix all dry ingredients together. Mix all wet ingredients in a different bowl. Add the wet ingredients over the dry one and mix to incorporate. With an ice-cream spoon place the batter in a prepared with muffin paper tray. Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes depending on the oven.

Melt 50 grams of dark chocolate. Add three tablespoons of coconut milk. Pour over and just enjoy them and try to stop after one LOL

For those of you who celebrated Family Day I hope you had a great day and for all the others I hope you made it through the Monday with a big smile on your face.

Hi Everyone! I and so happy to let you know that I was nominated for the One Lovely Blog Award !!! I know I am a bit late but I finally found time to send a big Thank you to my nominee, Elsie from ELSIE L.M.C. and to complete my nomination. Check out her blog. It is so interesting and funny and diverse!!!

The Rules for this award are as follows:

Thank the person who nominated you and leave a link to their blog

Post about the award.

Share 7 facts about yourself.

Nominate, at most, 15 people.

Tell your nominees the good news!

Seven facts about me

1. I love chocolate way to much. Any kind: dark, milky or white. I try to stay away from milky and white ones but I cannot be that good. I sometimes even get grumpy if several days pass without tasting just a bit of chocolate. My hubby and daughter often hear me say: ” Hand me the chocolate and no one gets hurt ”

2. I love to cook for my family and friends. I can’t wait for someone to say: there will be a party, brunch, etc and I’ll already be thinking of several dishes that I could do. LOL

3. I haven’t learned to bake yet my favorite dessert: eclair/ chou a la creme. After I got married with no baking experience at all I was so eager to try make them. Such a disappointment. It was a complete failure. I have yet to find the motivation to try again. However, they are still on the list! I’ve not completely given up yet!!

4. I love swimming even though I do not do it as often as I would like to.

5. I don’t like nor drink alcohol. On occasions I tried a glass of red or white wine or sometimes I tied my hubby beer but it’s just not for me. I would rather eat an eclair or two than drink a glass of wine 😉

On a Special Sunday’s post I made this delicious and easy cookies: Cocoa Cookies, that I found on one of my favorite Romanian blogs that I love to browse from time to time: Edith’s Kitchen.You can find the original recipe here.

My family was amazed by the results, despite the little changes that I made here and there. And my co-workers could not believe that something so delicious could come from so few (and let’s not forget HEALTHY) ingredients.

Ingredients

1/2 cup melted butter ( vegan )

3/4 cup of brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup all purpose flour

2 tbsp cocoa

1 tsp of instant coffee

2 tbsp rum extract (you can add a bit more as the taste is not very strong after baking) ( you can also substitute the rum extract with other flavor of your choice; I made with almond extract as well )

a pinch of Himalayan salt

In a bowl mix together the melted butter, the sugar, the egg, salt and the rum extract.

In a different bowl mix the flour, cocoa and baking soda.

Add the flour mixture over the butter mixture and mix well.

I have also tried a second batch substituting the egg with apple sauce. I have to admit in look they were slightly different but the taste was just: YUMMY !!!

One thing is sure. I added this cookies on the family list and preferences and because today is Family Day in Ontario, I hope you all have a great day.

When I started this blog back in 2011, I wanted to share the diversity of recipes we enjoy every day and on special occasions, but I also wanted to leave some of the recipes written down for my daughter. However, life is not as linear as we like to believe it is. In the following years, I had to focus on a career change and there was just not enough time to pursue my hobby. Not to the extent that I wanted to. I did, however, continue to photograph the food we ate. It’s a little soft spot of mine: going back and seeing what we used to eat, say, five years ago. It is so different than what we eat today!

As expected, over the years, our culinary preferences have changed. Personally, I had to do some (involuntary) changes due to some health problems. And along the way (and one gruesome documentary later), my daughter also decided to become vegan. My husband, however, is the only one that remains faithful and open to all kinds of challenges and new recipes. You put it in front of him, and if it looks and/or smells appetizing enough, he’ll eat it.

Now, you might ask yourself “Why is she telling us this?” I’ve been asked several times over the years what prompted me to start this blog. As I mention at the beginning of this post, this blog was meant to be a digital cookbook for my daughter to use after I’m long gone. (Bit sentimental but also morbid, as she so often likes to remind me). But now, as I become more immersed in this lovely community of food bloggers, this blog has grown and transformed in more ways than I ever dared to hope. And it is all because of you, dear reader. Now, before we get teary eyed, let me just say a big, warm thank you for supporting me and joining me on my daily adventure with food.

Because this Sunday was closer to Valentine’s Day I wanted to make it a bit more special.

We started the morning with Peppermint Hot Chocolate while waiting for the waffles to be done:

Since my daughter turned vegan, we discovered Yves company with their vegan products. One of our favorite ready done meals are the kale – quinoa bites. We had them on the side with mashed potatoes and veggies. Here you can see my husband’s plate which is quite overloaded 😉

Now for dessert I decided to go for a Vegan Butternut Squash pie. Unfortunately, I made a vegan crust but I lost my courage when it came to the filling .. .However it turned out just as amazing as a pie should be 🙂

Wishing you lots of love and delicious food.

” Love is just a word until someone comes along and and gives it a meaning.” – Paul Coelho

Friday !!! I have to admit this weekend I cheated. I had a vacation day on Friday. Just to relax, cook, play with the furry boys and go out with my daughter for some much needed mother and daughter fun.

Friday morning I wanted to make a special breakfast, especially because my better half had to go to work, so I decided to wake up early to make some pancakes. Because it felt like weekend already I wanted to come with something new and so I created:Vegan Matcha Peppermint Pancakes with Dark Chocolate Overloaded. This is a long title 😉 but I wanted to include all the goodies I used and the pancakes turned out so delicious and passed both tests: daughter and husband. I had the first one. I had to be sure they are OK, of course. And I had the second one as well 😉 just to be sure I wasn’t wrong about how good they were. The rest I saved for my peeps. LOL

I have to admit the pancakes were a huge success so I had to make them again on Sunday morning.

Vegan Matcha Peppermint Pancakes with Dark Chocolate Overloaded

And because this Sunday it was just me and my daughter, we had a very interesting vegan cream soup and a vegan mashed potato dish for lunch

Sweet potatoes – Acorn squash Vegan Cream Soup.

In addition to the very light vegan soup the Vegan Mashed Potato with Mushrooms.

I had no idea what to do for dessert. All I knew I wanted something with apples.

Something not complicated and fast to satisfy the three of us. So I picked up the ingredients from the fridge and pantry and I ended up with a wonderful creation:

Apple Cinnamon Dark Chocolate Muffins

All in all, this weekend was quite fun. I had time to relax, play with Sherlock & Steve and cook. It was as perfect a weekend as one could get. Hope your weekend was just as good!

♥

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